


To the Lees

by ash818



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, Futurefic, Retirement, Team Arrow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-19
Updated: 2014-03-19
Packaged: 2018-01-16 08:39:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1339045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ash818/pseuds/ash818
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You can’t afford many more concussions,” Felicity points out with neither pity nor spite. “One more rotator cuff injury, and there goes most of the range of motion in your shoulder. You never complain, but I know your back and your knees hurt you really badly sometimes.” She unfolds her arms and holds her hands out to him. “When do we start thinking about hanging up the hood?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	To the Lees

Felicity ties off the last suture and lays a hand on Oliver’s back. “All done.”

“Thank you.”

She leans against her desk and regards him thoughtfully while he pulls on a clean shirt.

“What’s wrong?” he says at last.

A line appears between her eyebrows. “When do you think we have to stop?”

He waits patiently for her to explain.

“You can’t afford many more concussions,” she points out with neither pity nor spite. “One more rotator cuff injury, and there goes most of the range of motion in your shoulder. You never complain, but I know your back and your knees hurt you really badly sometimes.” She unfolds her arms and holds her hands out to him. “When do we start thinking about hanging up the hood?”

He takes her hands. “Honestly, I didn’t expect to live that long.”

“Well, I expect you to live that long,” she says sharply. “I mean, you’re in otherwise excellent shape, there’s no reason you shouldn’t exceed the median, which I think is seventy-seven for men now. So that’s at least forty years you might want to plan for, because I think heroics are probably similar to the NFL in that everyone has to retire at thirty-five because of all the repetitive impact - “

His mouth used to get a little quirk to it when his executive assistant rambled that way. These days there’s no reason he can’t smile outright at his wife. “Felicity.”

“You’d make an excellent personal trainer, if you needed a second career. Your Arrow voice is extremely… motivating.”

“Maybe someday,” he says, tipping her chin up. “Today I need you to help me publicly humiliate a serial rapist whose parents have been paying off the D.A. to keep him out of prison.”

For that, he gets a peck on the mouth. “It would be my sincere pleasure.”

“His name is Joseph Risdon. Would you like me to bug his phone, steal his laptop, or dangle him from a bridge first?”

She looks up at him from under her lashes. “Oliver. You made a joke. About a case.”

He walks away smiling. That’s two boyish smiles today, and it’s not even 10:00am yet. “Score one for Mrs. Queen,” she murmurs to herself.

“Still hasn’t gotten old?” Dig says from behind her.

“Nope.” She doesn’t jump anymore when either of her boys sneaks up on her. “Mrs. Queen, Mrs. Queen, Mrs. Queen.”

He doesn’t make a noise, but somehow she gets the impression of a harrumph. “Thirty-five, huh? You must think I’m ancient.”

She makes a moue, laying a hand on his forearm. “Last year you had knee replacement surgery.”

“That was a combat injury, not the onset of decrepitude.”

She looks at him over the tops of her glasses. “Making my case for me there, Dig.”

He looks down at her hand on his arm, shaking his head in that long-suffering way. “Well. Old age hath yet his honor and his toil.”

She smiles in recognition. “Some work of noble note may yet be done.”

“Like completely burying this Risdon slimeball,” Dig says with distinct relish. “I liked the bridge idea.”

“Me too. But first let’s ruin his credit.”

Dig offers his arm, which she accepts grandly, and he escorts her to her desk, where he pulls out her chair with equal grandiosity. “Mrs. Queen.”

She gives a happy little hum. “Never, ever getting old.” Just for mischief, she adds, “Unlike us.”

Dig rolls her right up to her keyboard and kisses the top of her head. “Unlike us.”

They’re all three going to exceed the median.  
  
  
  
  
  


They keep saving the city, “Again. Some more,” as Felicity says. “It’s like debugging Windows. You know you’re just going to have to do it again.”

Until one day the city doesn’t need them anymore. Not because the work is done - no place this side of the grave will ever be free of injustice - but because this is the second time now that their involvement in a case has resulted in evidence being ruled inadmissible.

"Lance is heading up SCPD now," Digg points out. "That new DA means business. Laurel’s bringing the City Council around. Our kind of help isn’t help anymore."

They soldier on a few more months, because by this point they don’t know who they are without the mission. That ends when Felicity shows Oliver the sonogram.

They sit down with Digg, and they have an hour-long conversation about the ethics of undermining the rule of law, about the constant danger and the mounting scars. About how the work will never be done, but it’s not their work anymore. All three agree that it’s time. There are so many reasons why it’s finally time.

"Including the baby," Diggle says.

Oliver and Felicity look at each other, then back at him.

"She told you first?" Were Oliver less heroically stoic, he might have sounded hurt.

Digg rolls his eyes. “She didn’t have to.”

"You want us to name him after you?" says Felicity.

When the boy is old enough, Digg buys Johnny Queen his first beer. First legal beer, that is. The kid is too much like his dad, and clearly he’s way too familiar with booze already, because that night he tells Digg the story of his eighteenth birthday, which - holy shit. “I’m sure the ladies were lovely, but if your mother ever finds out, you will be terminated with extreme prejudice. And you will deserve it.”

Thank God for Robbie. At least the Queens have one sane kid.

Oliver’s shoulder stiffens up worse every year, and sometimes Digg’s knees are too painful to take his weight. Felicity learns to live with with the recurring nightmare where she gives her team faulty information and then has to listen to them die over the comms. For the rest of his life, when Oliver hears the name Tommy, a shadow passes across his face.

But pain is for the living. Only the dead don’t feel it.

Mint chocolate chip ice cream is for the living too. So are Christmukkah presents, truly divine malbecs, mortarboards with tassels, and all those second and third and thirtieth chances you don’t deserve.

As it turns out, the press loves a billionaire with a tragic past, a thriving business, and a photogenic young family. “I believe that’s what’s known as a bully pulpit,” Diggle points out. Oliver laid down the bow, but he can still fight. The work will never be done. For the first time Oliver - not the CEO, not the Hood, not the Arrow, but Oliver Queen - is the best man for the job.

For forty years, he serves. And because it’s what they’ve always done, because it’s who they are, Diggle and Felicity serve beside him.

Felicity is seventy-seven years old the day she buries her husband, and her arthritic hands struggle to fasten the Hōzen around Thea’s neck that morning. Digg sits to her left, her granddaughters to her right. The mayor says some nice things in the eulogy.

“Heroism works in contradiction to the voice of mankind, and in contradiction, for a time, to the voice of the great and good.” He’s quoting someone, but Felicity can’t think whom. “Heroism is an obedience to a secret impulse of an individual’s character.”

Felicity’s sons and grandsons - all of her beautiful, headstrong boys - stand as pallbearers. Three a side, they carry Oliver out into the sunshine.

"Most of these people don’t know who he really was," Digg says, scanning the crowd with the professional dispassion he once wore with his kevlar.

"They know enough," Felicity says, laying her hand over his. "Didn’t you hear? They called him a hero."

**Author's Note:**

> Digg and Felicity are snobs referencing the classics. [Ulysses](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174659) by Alfred, Lord Tennyson is actually quite a beautiful poem.  
> Ralph Waldo Emerson was a windbag, which is why the mayor is quoting him in the eulogy.  
> Some of you may also recognize Jim Butcher's line, "Pain is for the living. Only the dead don't feel it."


End file.
